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Smoking Kurt Cobain

Hermetic America? Nobel Prize controversy

Nobel Prize judge Horace Engdahl’s criticism of American literature this week has incensed the literary world. His claims that American novels were ‘too isolated, too insular’ merited no more than a one-word response from author Giles Foden, and Harvard Professor Werner Sollors, specialist in American literature, complained of Engdahl’s ‘historical and literary myopia’.

But perhaps Engdahl has a point – or more of a point, at least, than Foden’s angry ‘Bullshit!’ allows.

Professor Sollors points out that 'European bookstores are filled with works by American authors’. And yet, the same cannot be said for the fate of European novels in America. Of the 185,000 books printed in English in the United States in 2004, only 874 were adult literature in translation – a discrepancy that Salman Rushdie has called ‘shocking’. The lack of foreign literature in the States has been described by Brooklyn-based writer Paul Auster as ‘the great tragedy of American publishing’, and one French publishing magnate speaking in the Telegraph this week agrees: ‘It is true that American publishers rarely buy books in translation from foreign languages. That is to America's shame and also its loss.’

However, Philip Roth, the Nobel’s eternal bridesmaid, need not give up on his chances this year yet. ‘It is of no importance, when we judge American candidates, how any of us views American literature as a whole in comparison with other literatures,’ Engdahl has since added.

The Devil's party

John Milton will turn 400 on December 9th, and the Williamsburg Art and Historical Centre in Brooklyn celebrated last Saturday with the Grand Paradise Lost Costume Ball. Revellers were promised an evening ‘as sinfully delicious as “Man’s first disobedience” and the most fabulous extravaganza since Adam & Eve had to cover their nakedness!’

Music was provided by the JC Hopkins Biggish Swing Band, but surely a better choice would have been Philadelphia rockers Milton and the Devil’s Party. Formed by two English professors with a penchant for the Eagles, the Blake-inspired band are currently touring to promote their new album, How Wicked We’ve Become. They excitedly announce the poet’s birthday on their Myspace page: ‘Milton turns 400 this December! So, the rock band he incorporeally fronts is dedicating all its 2008 shows to everybody's favorite Puritan pariah!’

Kurt Cobain smoked in spliff, released into ether. (Apparently.)

If your funds don’t stretch to the $500-a-ticket Obama benefit concert and the thought of Maroon5’s contribution to the Campaign CD is already giving you nightmares, you might want to head down to Baron’s Court Theatre in London for The Obama Musical instead. Written by campaign member Teddy Hayes, it promises a comic behind-the-scenes look at the presidential race to the sounds of jazz, gospel, pop and soft rock. Listen out for the song ‘Obama and Me’, in which a particularly devoted team member comes out with the couplet: ‘We are a pair / Like chocolate and éclair.’

Elsewhere, artist Natascha Stellmach has announced that she will smoke a spliff allegedly containing the ashes of Kurt Cobain at the close of her current exhibition. ‘This final act,’ Stellmach said, ‘aims to release Cobain from the media circus and into the ether.’ Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, reported the theft of her husband’s ashes earlier this year, but was quick to retract her statement on hearing about Stellmach’s plans.

Less morbidly, but no less confusingly, performance artist Mark McGowan ‘rowed’ through the streets of London on Thursday in a raft made from recycled plastic bottles and rollerskate wheels, in a bid to convince people to drink tap water rather than bottled water. This is a more conservative effort than usual from McGowan, who has always worked in mysterious ways: he has been known in the past to eat corgis to promote vegetarianism, and catapult the elderly in ‘space capsules’ to promote pensioners’ rights.